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#3 - Pastcasting: engaging with seemingly unreachable futures
Ever feel like addressing the environmental crisis or other massive societal transformations seems utterly unreachable? Our latest "Deep Dive: Unpack This Paper" episode explores "Pastcasting: engaging with seemingly unreachable futures", a novel and powerful methodology that flips traditional futuring on its head.
This paper introduces pastcasting as an innovative approach designed to make urgent societal transformations, like achieving global sustainability goals, concrete and actionable. Instead of predicting the future, pastcasting invites participants to imagine complex problems as if they have already been solved in an alternative, more desirable present. They then collaboratively 'pastcast' what specific actions were taken in the recent past to achieve that outcome.
Discover how this method, meticulously detailed through an action-oriented research collaboration and participatory workshop with the Swedish Transition Network (STN), proves to be liberating and generative of ideas for action. The workshop, which vividly reimagined the 2007-2008 financial crisis as an oil crisis leading to a present where global oil consumption was halved, highlights key insights:
It facilitates imagination by providing a familiar, alternative present.It shifts the locus of agency closer to participants, empowering them directly.It reduces the perceived difficulty of transformation by placing the "pains" of change in the past.It breaks path dependency in thinking about how change can occur.
Tune in to understand how pastcasting can energize participants and generate actionable ideas for local change, effectively bridging the gap between what must be done and what feels possible for urgent sustainability goals. This deep dive is essential for anyone seeking practical, innovative methods to inspire real-world action.
Ref:
Minna Laurell Thorslund, Elina Eriksson, Daniel Pargman, Mia Hesselgren, Pella Thiel, Martin Hedberg, Amanda Martling. Pastcasting: Engaging with seemingly unreachable futures. Futures, Volume 171, 2025, 103609. ISSN 0016-3287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2025.103609.
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By Wensupu YangEver feel like addressing the environmental crisis or other massive societal transformations seems utterly unreachable? Our latest "Deep Dive: Unpack This Paper" episode explores "Pastcasting: engaging with seemingly unreachable futures", a novel and powerful methodology that flips traditional futuring on its head.
This paper introduces pastcasting as an innovative approach designed to make urgent societal transformations, like achieving global sustainability goals, concrete and actionable. Instead of predicting the future, pastcasting invites participants to imagine complex problems as if they have already been solved in an alternative, more desirable present. They then collaboratively 'pastcast' what specific actions were taken in the recent past to achieve that outcome.
Discover how this method, meticulously detailed through an action-oriented research collaboration and participatory workshop with the Swedish Transition Network (STN), proves to be liberating and generative of ideas for action. The workshop, which vividly reimagined the 2007-2008 financial crisis as an oil crisis leading to a present where global oil consumption was halved, highlights key insights:
It facilitates imagination by providing a familiar, alternative present.It shifts the locus of agency closer to participants, empowering them directly.It reduces the perceived difficulty of transformation by placing the "pains" of change in the past.It breaks path dependency in thinking about how change can occur.
Tune in to understand how pastcasting can energize participants and generate actionable ideas for local change, effectively bridging the gap between what must be done and what feels possible for urgent sustainability goals. This deep dive is essential for anyone seeking practical, innovative methods to inspire real-world action.
Ref:
Minna Laurell Thorslund, Elina Eriksson, Daniel Pargman, Mia Hesselgren, Pella Thiel, Martin Hedberg, Amanda Martling. Pastcasting: Engaging with seemingly unreachable futures. Futures, Volume 171, 2025, 103609. ISSN 0016-3287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2025.103609.